A personal blog owned by Zilko, who regularly writes about his life, or anything that comes up to his mind

Category Archives: Review

So the first chapter (i.e. the first nine episodes) of the first season (that is scheduled to have fifteen episodes) of the new Star Trek: Discovery has been concluded in mid-November. Of course I was really excited when the series was premiered earlier in the Fall; but now I have watched enough episodes to formulate my own opinion of the series. And here I would like to share that…

First of all, I have been enjoying the show. I find it exciting and the general story arc to be well written. Moreover, to me the characters are also very, very interesting as they focus not only on the senior officers (like typical other Star Trek series) but also on the “grass root” crewman level. The captain appears to be, at least a little bit, a “troubled” person, a trait which of course makes a show more exciting, and there seems to be a “silver bullet” in the Klingon side, the “antagonist” side of the series. Overall, I feel like the series is very rich in terms of the characters, that in my opinion is one of its strongest point.

There are a few details which I don’t like, however, mainly the spore drive technology which could make instantaneous travel to anywhere in the universe in no time (I find it “absurd” and it does not feel “right” especially considering that the series’ timeline to be before The Original Series let alone The Next Generation and Voyager). I also don’t like the design of the USS Discovery; but I have been feeling this way since the beginning anyway, haha 😆 .

Having said that, there is one big factor which disappoints me. To me this series has lost a big part of a Star Trek show: the social/interpersonal/intrapersonal conflict aspect present in many episodes of the other series. You see, unfortunately the excitement of the story arc comes with the price of a lot of focus on the “action” side of thing (thus the “excitement”). The side effect of this is that, to me, despite watching a show involving Star Trek characters and setting, it does not feel like watching a Star Trek series.

One of the many reasons I like the Star Trek series is that many of their episodes portray certain interesting social interactions/conflicts which I can relate to my life (be it personal or professional), even to the point of challenging a status quo and presenting strong ethical conflict. These episodes make me think about the dilemma in those situations and in some of those about what would I do if I were in those situations; which I find enjoyable. Of course not all episodes are like this, where there are times here and there where action-oriented episodes are produced as well to keep the excitement level up. I understand that focusing too much on the social aspect could lead to a “boring” show which could translate to lower rating (which in my opinion is a reason why Enterprise in the early 2000s “failed”); but stripping this part off the show also feels like stripping off an identity of the series. Well, at least to me…

To be fair, it is not like the writers completely take the social conflict out of the script. There are still some, for instance in the episode where Captain Lorca was captured by the Klingon and Discovery was attempting to save him. The only way for the crew to do so was to torture an animal. However, these are still too few to my liking and even those conflicts feel, well, “juvenile”.

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Ingeniously, the first chapter ended with a cliff hanger, where the last “spore jump” they attempted went incomplete, stranding USS Discovery nobody knew where, and Lt. Paul Stamets, whom had to steer the ship physically in each jump, reached the limit of the side effect and broke down. I felt like this was an opportunity the writers made to “kill off” the spore drive idea (As we knew it would not work eventually anyway, otherwise the entire Star Trek: Voyager became irrelevant and stupid); and to start “fresh” the next chapter.

***

Nevertheless, I guess the most important thing is that I still enjoy the show after all. It is just that I feel like the Star Trek identity has been lost a little bit. So it is interesting to see how the second chapter will pan out, and even the second season which apparently has been ordered!!

Last weekend, the fifth installment of Digimon Adventure Tri, Kyōsei, was released, which I would never miss as a big fan of Digimon Adventure (read: season 1 only)! 😀 This is the penultimate one, btw, as Digimon Tri is planned to be a six-part series. Anyway, here we go…

*** Spoiler Alert!!! ***

Being the penultimate series, a lot of the mysteries were answered in Kyōsei (Coexistence); and I started to understand what was going on.

It turned out that Meicoomon was born from the data remnant of Apocalymon, the final (and most evil) villain of Digimon Adventure 1. Naturally this made Meicoomon “dangerous” and “fragile” (sort of say). However, it appeared that the presence of a Digi-destined partner (Meiko) “tamed” and “controlled” this potentially dangerous side of Meicoomon.

Revealing Meicoomon’s identity

However, a mysterious entity named Yggdrasill appeared to want to take advantage of this where Meicoomon was “provoked” so “infection” (from Apocalymon data) was emitted of her body. Obviously this created chaos. Homeostatis, another entity being which was after the harmony of the Digital World, initially asked the Digi-destined to try to calm Meicoomon (in Part 2: Ketsui). This failed. So he rebooted the Digital World (in Part 3: Kokuhaku), but this also failed (Part 4: Sōshitsu). So Homeostasis resorted to his last option, that was to “kill” Meicoomon by sending a Mega-level digimon Jesmon to do the job.

This shocked the other eight Digi-destined as they didn’t believe killing Meicoomon was the solution to this. But halfway during the fight, they got confused themselves as some of them started to see Homeostasis’ point. During this moment of confusion, Taichi and Nishijima disappeared into a fissure on the ground. Thinking her older brother just died, Hikari got very sad and angry causing her Digimon partner, Nyaromon (Gatomon’s in-training form), to dark mega-digivolved to Ophanimon Falldown Mode. But things did not end here because Ophanimon Falldown Mode took Raguelmon (Meicoomon’s Mega form) and they fused into an unknown (but evil-looking) Digimon.

The fusion of Ophanimon Falldown Mode and Raguelmon

***

All in all, I am very happy with Kyōsei because finally, I start to understand what is going on! Having said that, I believe the writers took too long for some of these revelations. I mean now, it has literally been almost two years (!) since the release of the first series, Saikai. Meanwhile, the pace in Part 2 and Part 3 were excruciatingly slow that these films IMO would have benefited from more “injections” of “revelations” instead of keeping everything as mysteries.

Another aspect I like from this movie is that the writers were still able to put some light humor in the beginning. They don’t add anything to the story, actually; but this is one characteristic of a Digimon series! 🙂

A typical Digimon Adventure humor

However, my favorite part was actually Nyaromon’s dark mega-digivolve to Ophanimon Falldown Mode!! This was very, very interesting and reminded me a lot of Greymon’s dark digivolve to Skullgreymon in episode 16 of Digimon Adventure 1! At the time, Taichi was forcing Agumon to digivolve to its Ultimate form by torturing him. Consequently, instead of digivolving to Metalgreymon, Agumon digivolved to Skullgreymon. This time, it was Kari’s negative emotion (sadness, anger) which triggered this.

This, however, became a cliff hanger (and a good one, I must say) and we have to wait until the final film, Boku-ra no Mirai (Our Future), to find out what is going to happen. But that is scheduled to be released in Summer 2018 😣. Still far in the future! 😣

Anyway, all in all, I really enjoyed this fifth series of Digimon Tri!!

The fourth installment (of six) of Digimon Adventure Tri, Sōshitsu, was released at the end of February. And as a big fan of Digimon Adventure (read: season 1 only), naturally I was not going to miss it!

Well, except that I just watched it this Sunday because for whatever reason I forgot that it was released in February (instead, I thought it would be in Match!) 🙈.

But the most important matter is that now I have watched it! Haha 😆 . Anyway, I was quite excited when seeing the official poster because I saw my favorite Dark Masters there, Machinedramon! Yeay!! The Dark Masters were my favorite villains in Digimon Adventure 1 (and so the Dark Masters arc was also my favorite of the entire series). So obviously I was curious what role would Machinedramon do here. Or whether or not this Machinedramon was related to the Machinedramon in Digimon Adventure 1 which Wargreymon should have killed (Even though indeed digimons reincarnate).

Continuning from where we left off in Kokuhaku, the movie started with how the eight digi-destined attempted to reconnect with their partners, whom had lost their memory due to the Reboot. It was clear from the beginning that Sora and Biyomon would be the central characters in this movie as they had difficulties in reconnecting. It was understandable, though; as for Biyomon, she did not know Sora at all so it was not surprising that she created some distance.

It was also revealed that Himekawa and Nishijima were part of the original DigiDestined (consisted of five kids, shown as sillhouettes in the last episode of Digimon Adventure season 1). They were battling the Dark Masters at the time and had to sacrifice Megadramon, Himekawa’s partner, to defeat them. Because of this, Megadramon could not reincarnate into a new Digi-Egg. Years later, Himekawa was obsessed with reviving her partner (whose Rookie form was Tapirmon) and had a research on “rebooting” the Digital World. This way, there was a possibility that Tapirmon could be born again. Meanwhile, Nishijima was also warned of the involvement of someone named “Yggdrasil” who seemed to be the brain behind all of this mess.

Dark Gennai and Machinedramon

In the Digital World, the DigiDestined were attacked by Dark Gennai (Gennai that appeared to have been “infected” and now worked for Yggdrasil), who was controlling two members of the Dark Masters: Machinedramon and MetalSeadramon. Agumon and Gabumon were able to evolve to Wargreymon and MetalGarurumon and defeated MetalSeadramon. Meanwhile, Sora and Biyomon had reconnected and Biyomon mega-digivolved to Phoenixmon. Patamon also mega-digivolved to Seraphimon because it wanted to fight ( 😆 ), and so Tentomon to HerculesKabuterimon. The three defeated Machinedramon.

Phoenixmon vs Machinedramon

Meanwhile, Dark Gennai was able to get to Meiko and provoked Meicoomon to get angry to release the evil in it.

*** Spoiler Ends Here ***

I have to say this was my most favorite Tri movies so far! The story line became more clear. The motives and background of Himekawa and Nishijima were told. The mystery surrounding the villain appeared to have been (slowly) revealed as well, but not completely. And the actions were good!

Okay, there were a few parts which I deemed unnecessary, though. For instance the splitting of the eight DigiDestined but literally nothing was happening during the split and an episode later they all reconcilled.

Another aspect I loved about the movie was the ending! FINALLY, they were using Ai Maeda’s “Keep On”, my favorite Digimon ending song of all time! 😍😍😍

So, overall I really LOVED this movie! And I cannot wait for the fifth one, Kyōsei (Symbiosis), that will be released later on this year!! 😍😍😍

Just recently, I watched both of the PhD Movies. In case you are unfamiliar, these are based on the popular PhD Comics. If you are still unfamiliar, well, PhD Comics is webcomic strip focusing on the lives of several PhD students/candidates.

As a (former?) PhD candidate (Well, I am kinda in a limbo now where technically my PhD contract has ended but I still do not yet have my defense, though I am in the process of getting one 😛 ), I relate to a lot of the topics in it! They are brought up in short and humorous way, yet still very relevant and, in most cases, represent how I feel over some topics which I happen to face as well. So if you are a PhD student yourself, or if you even just want to know a little bit of the lives of a PhD student, I do recommend this channel! They also have their own Facebook page (Piled Higher and Deeper (so abbreviated as “PhD” 😛 )) which you can follow 😉 .

Anyway, back to the movies. Due to the popularity of the comic strip (which had been run since 1997), in 2011 the first movie adaptation was made which was followed by the second one in 2015. And, yes, I have decided to watch it just recently (>.<), haha 😆 .

The first movie focused more on the life of PhD students in the university. The unnamed grad student (whose name was revealed to be “Winston” later) just started working at Prof. Smith’s lab and realized the harsh truth of a research work, where nothing was easy and sometimes it appeared to be “mundane” (I experienced this phase in my PhD as well, btw). Meanwhile, Cecilia, a more senior grad student, had to deal with (lazy) undergrad students (I also had similar-ish experience too about this, lol 😆 ) and the difficulty to find the work-life balance, as it was very tempting to leave out the “life” part.

The second movie took place a few years later, where all characters were still in grad-school, and faced some latter challenges in PhD years. Winston went to his first ever international conference where, in his naivity, he was involved in a funding and rivalry war between his group and his professor’s nemesis. Cecilia, on the other hand, had almost completed her PhD and she was struggling with writing up the dissertation. (Trust me, writing up a dissertation is NOT as easy as it sounds, lol. Luckily, my supervisor warned me about this many times 😛 ).

In my opinion, both movies were awesome! I could totally relate some parts of the four years of my life to both movies! The first movie was an appropriate introduction of the life as a PhD student in university. Winston’s story reflects the life of a newbie, while Cecilia’s represents the more experienced ones, like in the second or third year.

The second movie was even more interesting, especially because a “villain” was introduced, i.e. Dr. Sangeeta Singh, the rival of Prof. Smith. The conflict between the characters due to this rivalry was heated; and I can tell you that this kind of conflict is not uncommon in real-life 😛 . Cecilia’s struggle to finish writing her dissertation was also very real. And I especially could relate to this because this was the main theme of my last eight to nine months of PhD years, lol 😆 .

One story in the second movie was Cecilia’s struggle to fix a defense date with her committee members. This one:

Lol, I actually had to face a similar conflict this October. Even though, obviously, not to the same degree, I had an extra constraint in my case, which was the room availability in TU Delft. So of all the rooms in TU Delft, there was only one room that could be used for a PhD defense. And with thousands of PhD students, let’s say reserving this room was not always easy. So you could imagine, I had to find an exact date AND time where all of my seven committee members (one was even from abroad) could come to Delft AND the one room was also available! I had to go through a few iterations of date and time before I managed to find one solution! Haha 😆 .

Anyway, so, yeah, I truly did enjoy both movies. And I do recommend them to you!! 😉 Both portray the lives of PhD students well in humorous way. Here is the trailer of the second movie.

I am a big fan of Digimon Adventure (read: season 1 only). So naturally I was super excited when last year I found out that there would be a new installment of Digimon Adventure, Digimon Adventure Tri, with the main casts being the original eight Digi-destined from season 1!

This installment is split into six series, taking a few months of break in between ( 😆 ). In November last year, the first series, Saikai (Reunion), was released and in March the second one, Ketsui (Determination), followed suit. At the end of September, finally the third series, Kokuhaku (Confession), was released.

Anyway, here is my take on it. Please be aware that from hereon, I might drop spoilers of this series here and there.

*** SPOILER STARTS HERE ***

The Plot

Some of the mysteries and questions raised in the first two movies were answered, though several new ones were actually introduced, lol 😆 . The (possible) reason for the disappearance of the characters from Digimon Adventure season 2 was that they actually vanished, for some mysterious reasons, along with other Digi-Destined all over the world. Though I actually wonder since the characters knew each other in season 2, wouldn’t they be, somehow, in contact so the original eight should have noticed of their disappearance?

It was also revealed that Meiko already knew about Meicoomon’s infection and actually Meicoomon was the source of the infection. However, that was pretty much what was “confessed” in this Confession series. The origin or the purpose of it, sadly, still remains a mystery up to now. Anyway, this caused Meiko to feel incredibly upset and acted annoyingly throughout the series.

The infected Patamon (thus Angemon) was one main story of this series

The focus of this series was on Takeru and Koshiro. It turned out that Patamon was infected and at one point could not control himself and bit Takeru. Understandably Takeru could not reveal this to the other but then took Patamon home with him as a precautionary step. Koshiro worked super hard, to the point that he did not sleep for days, trying to solve the mystery. He could not get the answer he was looking for that he felt incredibly upset about it (Tbh that sounds a lot like a PhD research, lol 😆 ). In the end, he found the root of the problem, that the binary codes of the Digital World had been, somehow, rewritten with a different programming language that it caused distortions and the infections.

Meanwhile, Hikari got possessed by “Homeostasis”, who claimed to be the god of the Digital World. Homeostasis revealed that if the infection was not stopped, it could potentially destroy not only the Digital Worlds but also other worlds; the the effect on the real world was that there would be no electricity on Earth? One possible way to prevent that was to “reboot” the Digital World to reset it to how it was before the infection; pretty much like reinstalling a troubled computer. The catch, though, the memories of the Digimons would be lost; pretty much like any non-backed-up data during a computer reinstallment.

Meanwhile, a distortion occurred at Tokyo Big Sight (Yeay, been there last year! 😛 ) and Meicoomon appeared. The digimons tried to stop Meicoomon but they struggled; in fact, one by one they got infected. Consequently, Homeostasis triggered the “Reboot” option. Koshiro came up with a plan to back-up the data of the partner Digimons. Tentomon, the last uninfected Digimons, mega-digivolved to HerculesKabuterimon battling the other eight Digimons, but failed to back their data up in time. Then, the Reboot occurred.

HerculesKabuterimon

After mourning for a week, the eight Digi-Destined decided to brave up and go to the (still unstabled) resetted Digital World to look for their Digimon partners. There, they briefly encountered a battle between Alphamon and a digimon called Jesmon, both Mega-level digimons. Thus raising the question, how could these two digimons be already in their Mega-level if the Digital World had just been rebooted? Anyway, not long after, they heard a whistle noise; which turned out to come from Tokomon. There, the eight Digi-Destined met their eight Digimon partners in their in-training levels, who have lost all their memories. They all started to get to know each other from scratch.

The series ended with a big cliff-hanger. Digimon Emperor (assumed to be Ken Ichijouji) was revealed to actually be young Gennai. He was overlooking the eight Digi-Destined from on top of a hill, where he was met by Himekawa.

*** SPOILER ENDS HERE ***

Overall, I am really happy with this third series; I think this is the best one of the three that have been released. One quote I really like from this series came from Tentomon, especially that I could totally relate to it 🙂

“Knowing nothing is just a chance to learn new things, right?”

Yes Tentomon, that is SO right!! Though of course in real life we also face the imminent real-world constraints like deadlines (to sufficiently know things) and stuffs, lol 😆 .

Tentomon’s speech

Anyway, the main conflict of Digimon Tri is getting infused stronger in the story line, though only a little bit clearer. Which brings me up to the next point: pace. While the pace of Kokuhaku was faster than of Saikai or Ketsui, overall it still felt rather slow. Probably it was also due to the still a lot of unresolved mysteries and answers, haha 😆 . For instance, the cliff-hanger at the end. But I think that was actually supposed to be the purpose of a cliff-hanger, to raise more question and, thus, excitement for the next series 😆 .

However, I find the consequence of the unresolved infected Digimons (the real world would lose the electricity) to be, well, rather “lame”. I mean, I agree that it would have been a major catastrophe in modern life. How could we function without electricity (so no lamps, no telephone, no computer, no internet)? However, I think it would have been cooler had it been something “bigger” than that, haha 😆 . What could it be? Well, I am not sure myself, but I am not a writer of the series 😛 .

On the other hand, I like the twist where Koshiro’s plan to back-up the Digimon partners’ data failed; showing that not all plans would come through, even in a fiction 😆 . Another aspect which I like is that the end of the series where the Digi-Destined started a new adventure in the Digital World, with the intention of finding their Digimon partners and to get to know them from scratch. This is a good stepping stone to the next series.

Speaking of the next series, the fourth one, Soushitsu (Loss), is scheduled to be released in February 2017. Damn! Five more months to go! 😣

One movie that I have been waiting for this summer was the animated movie: Sausage Party.

First of all, even though this movie is an animated one, it is rated “R” so it is VERY NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN. I repeat, it is NOT FOR CHILDREN.

Okay, clear on that? Good! Now let’s continue…

The reason of my interest was the unique premise. Remember the 1990s movie Toy Story? The basic idea of the movie is similar; but instead of toys that are alive, in this movie it is food (and some other items sold at a supermarket). Btw, humans cannot see that the food is alive; as how we perceive food in reality. And, well, you know damn well what we do to food (in case you don’t, well, we eat them).

The following is the green-band (so the safe-ish) trailer of the movie:

Yeah, so I hope by now you have understood why this movie IS NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN (This is literally the third time I say this in this post. So if you bring your child(ren) to this movie after reading this, well you are probably illiterate). Aside from the “violence”, there are a lot of adult (porn) humor material throughout the movie.

Anyway, the movie followed the plot that food believed humans were god; that once they were purchased from the supermarket, they were “chosen” to enter “the great beyond” where everything was beautiful, full of happiness, perfect, etc. The main characters of the movie was a sausage, Frank, and his hotdog bun girlfriend, Brenda; who went on an adventure in the supermarket while slowly learning about the truth of their existence.

You see? The premise itself is already very interesting, isn’t it? One question which triggered my curiosity, a lot, was “how would the movie end?” Would it be a happy ending? But in that case, happy for whom? If the food got what they “wanted”, i.e. humans no longer ate them; that basically meant humans would die out of starvation?

And oh wow, how the movie surprised me, big time. The ending was not like any other normal ending. It was so twisted, like “wtf” twisted, lol 😆 . I liked it though because it really, really caught me off guard and I totally did not expect that. Especially that I was in a cinema with other people watching at the same time, lol 😆 .

***

The movie was premierred in the States in August 2016; though it was only premierred in the Netherlands this week. So you could imagine it really annoyed me that I had to wait that long before I could watch it, haha 😆 .

To be honest, I think it would be very surprising to see the movie being allowed to be screened in Indonesia. It would require heavy editing and a lot of scene-cuttings; and I am not sure how much would be left if they really do that, haha 😆 .

However, if you have the chance to watch this movie, I do recommend it; mainly for the pure (adult) humor and comedy. The popular hashtag #foodporn fits this movie really well, actually. Nonetheless, there is another side of the movie that is more transcendental than just the humor; that is about belief. This movie, in my opinion, puts a new perspective on how we can perceive this sensitive stuff.

Anyway, if you are going to watch the movie, please remember: DO NOT BRING YOUR CHILDREN WITH YOU! (For the record, this is the fourth time I say this).

Pokémon Go is amazing! One more good thing about this game is that it actually instills extra motivation to exercise! Haha 😆

Navigating my evening jog route with Pokémon Go

Because of this game, lately I go out for some evening jog more often than normal. The route, of course, is set according to the PokéStops and the pokémon type I target to catch. For instance, when I wanted to catch more Staryus (which is one of my favorite pokémons btw), I set a route which for the most part went along the canals of Delft so the chance to encounter a wild water pokémon, including a Staryu, was larger. Moreover, it also made time pass by quickly as well. When I used the “Lucky Egg”, whose effect was to double the amount of points I got from everything for thirty minutes, I just walked around Delft for the entire 30 minutes without perceiving the 30 minutes part! Somehow 30 minutes was up, the “Lucky Egg” effect wore down, and I had exercised for 30 minutes! Haha 😆 .

Awesome!!

Star Trek: Beyond

As a self-proclaimed Trekkies, of course I did not want to miss the newest Star Trek installment of Star Trek: Beyond. I did not want to miss it like I did with its previous movie, Star Trek: Into Darkness, which I watched a few months late in an Emirates’ IFE, haha 😆 . So on Sunday evening I decided to go to the cinema to watch it.

And how was it? Well, I think it overall was great!! 🙂 I enjoyed the action (and graphic), the storyline was very clear where everything was integrated with each other (for instance, the USS Franklin did not just “coincidentally” get stranded on the same planet with respect to the storyline), and, well, I just love Star Trek! Okay, this is admittedly a little bit biased, haha 😆 . However, I did feel like some parts of the movie were a little bit of recycles from some of the previous Star Trek movies. For instance, the USS Enterprise got badly damaged and went down to an alien planet? Well, Star Trek: Generations, anyone? (Yes, I do remember the scene from my childhood 😛 ).

Nevertheless, I did enjoy the movie a lot, which was great of course. Oh, and btw, it turned out that Joe Taslim was the actor who portrayed Manas in the movie! Lol, I did not notice that! (Well, obviously given that he had to be dressed as an evil alien form 😛 ). I grade this movie a 4 ourt of 5!! 🙂